Overwhelmed
by Eve Davidson
Summary: Ashley and her feelings after Craig flips out.


I was home, just staring out the window. So much had happened so fast, making me dizzy. Craig. He was in the hospital now. And I was home, and my mother was worried, and said I shouldn't see "that boy" like she couldn't even say his name.

It was a whirlwind. I thought of the past few weeks, of how much Craig had been talking. The talking was the main thing, but there had been the moving, the ideas, the grandiose delusions. The wedding proposal, and I could see it again, the dark club, the pounding beat of the music as he got down on his knees in front of me, took my trembling hands in his, held up the ring. Was that proposal still real? Or was it null and void, wiped out by his diagnosis?

I knew Craig was troubled, of course. That went without saying. I mean, his parents were dead. His dad had beat him. I remembered meeting his dad, and he'd seemed nice enough, and I told Craig that. Then that distant gaze, the way he looked away and softly said, "yeah, when he doesn't have a belt in his hand,"

I know I wasn't there. I know that whatever Craig had gone through he went through alone. But I thought it was only that, a troubled boy who had trouble committing because of his past. But now it was something more.

Could I handle something more? I'd barely been able to handle troubled. How could I handle mentally ill? Bipolar? How could I deal with this? And I knew it wasn't about me because I was normal, because my thoughts had never raced at a thousand miles an hour, I'd never felt like I was watching three T.V. stations all at once. And how could I ever tell where mentally ill ended and Craig began?

I wanted to go see him, of course. Joey said it would be okay, that it would be good. And I felt like such a child with this. I was willing to defer to Joey and what he thought was best. I didn't want to make things worse. Part of me was afraid to go, I didn't want to see what I didn't want to see. Maybe I wanted some dream of last year, before Manny and the betrayal, before my heart was broken. This boy has shattered me, and sometimes even I can't bear to say his name.

But I'm young, you know? I'm 16. I don't know so much about love. Is it supposed to hurt this bad? Is it supposed to feel like I'm lost, going in a million different directions with no compass? Is this what it is to love someone, or is this what it is to love Craig?

Who can I talk to about this? Not my mother. She just hates Craig, or dislikes him, because she saw what he did to me. He didn't see that because I wouldn't show him. I was brave at school, pretending to be some together girl who didn't give a shit. At home I fell apart, crying for hours in my room because my love was gone. So my mother would never have an impartial ear.

How deep does it go? How long has he been sick with this? What signs and symptoms did I miss? Because now I can look back and see all kinds of troubling things. In grade nine, the end of the year dance, when he yelled at me and tore down the posters I thought it was because he was grieving for his father…and maybe that was all it was. Grief. And when he cheated on me with Manny and got her pregnant I thought he couldn't commit to me or to her, because he was afraid.

I don't know. I don't know what to do. I'm not very good at one step at a time. I'm not very good at living in the moment. I see the wedding I'd been planning for after high school dissolving away. Because I know that his wedding proposal was part of this, part of being bipolar. But what part does that leave me?

I'm thinking of that Alanis Morrisette song, there's this line, "I'm sane but I'm overwhelmed," That line is for me. Craig has the benefit of being crazy and I have the burden of sanity. And these words aren't solving anything. Sitting here in the dark by my window, the night pressing against the glass like it sometimes does. I want to figure things out but can't, can't unstick the cotton candy quality of my thoughts.

Is the bottom line of all of this that I love him? I don't know. I do love him. I do wish this hadn't happened, that he was okay. I know what I'm going to do, too. I know my tendency to try and put the pieces of things back together, to find a path out of the woods. I know I'll come up with solutions and game plans and survival guides, but I'm not there yet. Right now I'm simply overwhelmed.


End file.
